Oceans, seas, and estuaries are protected by marine protected areas. These regions aid in the preservation of the flora and fauna that are native to these waterways, but the advantages of protected areas go far beyond their borders. A group of experts describe how marine protected area support ecological and social adaptation to climate change and aid in the sequestration of carbon in a review that appears in the journal One Earth on October 21.
“More and more, marine protected zones are being pushed as an ocean-based climate solution. However, given the fragmented and poorly integrated research on the advantages of marine protected areas for the climate, such assertions continue to be debatable “the authors, please. In order to fill this information gap, we carefully looked at 22,403 publications that talked about 241 marine protected areas.
Oceans, seas, and estuaries are all safeguarded by the presence of marine protected areas. The plants and animals that call these waterways home are being helped to survive thanks to the establishment of these zones, but the advantages of protected areas extend well beyond their borders. They came to this conclusion because “partial or complete deterioration of mangroves and seagrass both resulted in equivalent losses of stored carbon.”
In addition to increasing carbon sequestration, conserved habitats increased species richness, biodiversity, and demonstrated benefits to humans. The food security in marine protected areas was higher, and the fish populations in the waters nearby these protected areas increased. The benefits of these protected areas for mitigation and adaptation, according to the authors, were only possible with extremely high levels of protection, and they grew the longer a region was protected.
The authors wrote that only full and high levels of protection produced benefits for mitigation or adaptation across all four routes considered, they wrote. “Low levels of protection, however, had no positive effects. Furthermore, only in fully protected regions, where fishing is prohibited, did species richness and fishers’ revenue increase.
